Animal waterers have developed over the years to automatically dispense a liquid into a container. Typically, the container is a vessel connected to a water source which can be selectively activated to fill the vessel with the liquid while also being selectively deactivated so that the vessel does not overflow. Additionally, features have been developed to measure the amount of water or liquid dispensed into the container. This feature is important as some animals, namely horses may not consume enough water when dealing with an illness. The ability to measure the amount of water entering the container then allows the animal to be more closely monitored for fluid intake and fluids can be supplemented if the need arises.
In order to measure the water, the current state of the art typically utilizes a sensor that can detect the motion of a part of a water meter and then translate the motion into an amount of water that enters and/ or exits the water meter. Certain water meters of this type utilize one or more magnets, and take advantage of the Hall effect and the sensor to calculate the amount of water. Certain moving parts of the water meter can affect the preciseness of the measurements of the amount of water.
As animal waterers are typically outside and exposed to the elements, they and the water meters are susceptible to damage and the parts must frequently be replaced. Since some users of animal waterers may possess many individual waterers, the number of parts and time needed to repair damaged waterers and water meters can be significant. In particular, during freezing events, the water meters can break due to the expansion of water when becoming a solid.